The StarTutorial.com site has posted the next in their "Understanding Design Patterns" series of tutorials today. In this latest post they cover the Factory design pattern.

[The Factory design pattern provides] an interface for creating families of related or dependent objects without specifying their concrete classes.

They use the same fictional business as in the previous articles to put the pattern in a more "real world" situation. The goal is to create several "toy factories" that can build "toy" objects based on certain requirements: either cars or helicopters. The post starts with the creation of an abstract factory class and shows the concrete implementations of one for each type of toy. These concrete classes include basic properties about the toy and functionality to build out the basics (ex: a car has four wheels, a helicopter has rotors).

On the StarTutorial.com site, they've posted the latest in their article series covering design patterns and their implementation in PHP. In this latest tutorial they cover the simple factory pattern. To help illustrate the point of the pattern they use an example of a toy company with an ever-expanding line of toys.

Dragon Inc. is one of the top toy manufacturers in China. In fact, they're a pioneer in toy manufacturing. They started production at a time when few toys were being produced commercially. Hence, they dominated the market and became the leader in the toy production industry.

The initial version of their produceToy method only had to worry about toy cars and helicopters. As their line expanded, it needed to be updated for "jumping frogs" too. Adding each new toy to the single function would be difficult to maintain but the simple factory pattern came to the rescue. It allowed for the abstraction of the toy object creation out to other handling and other objects, breaking the functionality up in accordance with the Single Responsibility Principle.

If you've been around the PHP community for any length of time, there's a pretty good chance you've seen the language's "mascot" floating around - the elePHPant. This mascot has even been made into a stuffed toy in various colors - blue, red, yellow and now thanks to [php]architect, orange.

Ready to add, or start, your collection of elePHPants? We started a KickStarter campaign to produce a run of Orange elephants. [...] There’s much more information over at our Kickstarter project. The campaign is set to a short timeframe and ends on February 3rd as we need to get our production order placed as soon as possible. So get over there and claim your orange elePHPant before time runs out!

The Kickstarter campaign, originally fully funded at $1,000 USD has now reached an amazing $16,000+ USD. There are still plenty of spots left open if you want to pledge and get in on this purchase. Options range from a simple $1 USD for support all the way out to a $250 USD option that gets you a "zoo" (ten small elePHPants and one large elePHPant).

On 7PHP.com today, they've posted an interview with Vincent Pontier about a few different things including how the elePHPant stuffed toys came about.

You cannot be a true fan of The PHP Community and a programmer with PHP in your heart, if you haven’t heard of the magical, mystical and elegant PHP mascot that is coined as and known famously and passionately as ele.. PHP.. wait for it!: The elePHPant! If you are part of The Community, you probably already knew how it was created since the creator of the elePHPant answered it in his movie. But! Do you actually know why it was created and where the idea of creating it came from? And do you actually know Elroubio himself?

While the original interview was in French, it's written up in English to reach a wider audience (it's also in its original French at the end of the post). They talk about some of Vincent's background, where the idea for the elePHPant originally came from, what he thinks of the current status of the elePHPants.

To help "sweeten the deal" a bit and encourage you to give towards the causes that the PHP Women are trying to accomplish, they're offering a special little bonus for those who donate at a certain level:

Cal Evans from the Zend DevZone - being the awesome guy that he is - has graciously offered to mail out to the first 10 people who donate to PHPWomen $50 or more, a PHP elePHPant. Yep - you get one of the hard to find and much sought after plushy PHP elePHPants.

You can find out more about the goals for their fund raising in this other post to the PHPWomen.org blog as well as information on submitting whatever you feel like donating (time or money).

Damien Seguy and company have developed a brand new plush toy based around the PHP elephant idea set out by Vincent Pontier a while back:

The elephant is a community project. It was started as a crazy idea that I used to suggest to a number of people. I managed to draw a lot of happy smile, but I suspect that half this happiness was due to sheer craziness of the project. [...] Of course, it was impossible to prototype this mascot without involving Vincent Pontier. The rest is history. We started prototyping, and within a month, we got this excellent looking plush toy (we'll tell you about the manufacturer once we get the full load of them).

Check out the post on Nexen.net for lots of product shots (including the obligatory cute kid shot) and details on how it was developed and the answer to the important question - where you can get your hands on one.

Some groups have already ordered a large number of them for themselves and their members, but an online shop is coming soon to Nexen.net where you can pick up your own fuzzy bit of PHPness.

Damien Seguy and company have developed a brand new plush toy based around the PHP elephant idea set out by Vincent Pontier a while back:

The elephant is a community project. It was started as a crazy idea that I used to suggest to a number of people. I managed to draw a lot of happy smile, but I suspect that half this happiness was due to sheer craziness of the project. [...] Of course, it was impossible to prototype this mascot without involving Vincent Pontier. The rest is history. We started prototyping, and within a month, we got this excellent looking plush toy (we'll tell you about the manufacturer once we get the full load of them).

Check out the post on Nexen.net for lots of product shots (including the obligatory cute kid shot) and details on how it was developed and the answer to the important question - where you can get your hands on one.

Some groups have already ordered a large number of them for themselves and their members, but an online shop is coming soon to Nexen.net where you can pick up your own fuzzy bit of PHPness.